Major expansion planned for Bridge Street Town Centre in Huntsville

Bridge Street Town Centre in Cummings Research Park. (The Huntsville Times/Michael Mercier)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Cummings Research Park is home to a lot more than office buildings and labs.

Bridge Street Town Centre, a 100-acre mixed-use development, opened on the edge of the park on Old Madison Pike in November 2007, starting with about a dozen shops.

The center, developed by O&S Holdings, has grown to include about 75 shops and restaurants, a 14-screen Monaco Pictures, a 144,000-square-foot office building and a 210-room Westin Huntsville hotel.

Since Bridge Street opened, "it has provided Cummings Research Park several new-to-the-area restaurants, unique retail concepts, one-of-a-kind entertainment venues and a Westin Huntsville hotel, which equates to a mix that competing research parks cannot match," said Doug Badia, executive vice president with O&S Holdings. "This supports companies based in the park with recruiting the best talent and growing their businesses."

One of the newest additions is the international apparel retailer H&M, which opened in June.

"This is the first H&M store in the Southeast outside of Atlanta," said Bridge Street's general manager Rochelle Allgood. "That's huge for the community and Bridge Street."

And the center - now at about 95 percent occupancy - continues to expand.

The Huntsville City Council on Sept. 27 approved a $4 million incentives package that would help Bridge Street's owners bring in a Belk department store along with an additional 45,000 square feet of retail space and a chain restaurant that's new to the area.

To make room for the new shopping and dining, much of the manmade lake on the west side of Bridge Street will be filled in.

Another significant development for Bridge Street came earlier this year when Miller Capital Advisory, acting on behalf of Institutional Mall Investors, acquired the retail component of the center.

"We view Huntsville as a dynamic and growing community and we look forward to further enhancing the center for the benefit of its shoppers," said John Neutzling, MCA's chief operating officer, in a statement released when the sale closed in May.